Tag: social insects

fancy pants

Looking through recent photos, it occurs to me that when I take pictures of bees they almost invariably end up as rear views.

white-bottomed bumble bee on teasel
This doesn’t seem to make much sense: surely it’s unwise to creep up on a creature whose defence mechanism is probably automatic and very much located in its rear end.
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feeling antsy

ant carrying seed
I get lots of newsletters in my inbox and barely have time to do more than scan them, but earlier this week, the headline “Sisterhood of Ants: The Original Social Network” caught my eye, so I clicked through to read the opening paragraph:

As we struggle to understand what it means to be social creatures who meaningfully participate in communities and networks, ants and mice (and the scientists who study them) may be able to tell us something about ourselves.

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